


fossils (the something old, something new remix)

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Future Fic, Honeymoon, Hotels, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their honeymoon is more low-key than not, which makes a change from the majority of their relationship to date. Charles appreciates the change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fossils (the something old, something new remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fossils](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057668) by [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten). 



Erik dozes off within fifteen minutes of lift-off, which Charles thinks is just as well. Erik has always been the most terrible backseat driver, no matter what form of transportation might be involved. No matter that Erik has never had the slightest bit of pilot training: an airplane is made of metal, and he can keep track of where he's going by the Earth's magnetic fields; surely he would do a better job than whatever imbecile is in charge.

Besides, it's always nice seeing Erik at rest. Asleep, with his personality and its ego and charisma at rest, he's as small or contained as any normal man, arms folded across his chest and his forehead resting lightly against the window cover. His mouth is hanging open a little -- there will most likely be drool on his collar when he awakes again -- and he's snoring ever so faintly.

He looks absolutely ridiculous, and Charles can't stop staring at him and grinning like an idiot, fondness like a physical ache in his chest.

Another advantage of Erik being asleep: Charles can be as frightfully sentimental as he wants without having to deal with either Erik's rolled eyes or his smugness.

After all, he's a newlywed. If there's any time in a man's life that he's entitled to a bit of sentimentality, it's now. 

It's not the only indulgence he allows himself, either. When the flight attendant comes around to offer drinks, Charles treats himself to a glass of champagne. 

"It's our honeymoon," he explains to the girl as she serves him -- no, _woman_ , he has to remind himself. She can't be much younger than Charles was, when he and Erik first met. Everyone under the age of fifty or so seems like a child to Charles these days.

"Oh, congratulations!" she responds, with a dazzling smile. She glances over to Erik and back to Charles -- and, ah, Charles thinks, she's part of the second class of people, when it comes to responding to the news. Those are the ones who find it romantic, and vaguely inspirational; as if he and Erik were not individual people with lives and histories of their own, not just a photograph to accompany some human interest story.

Charles prefers them to the first class of people, of course. Those are the ones who can't help but wonder what the point is: why even bother, now, when they're so old? 

It's not something people actually say out loud, which is just as well, because Charles's explanation would take fifty years. As long as the living of it took.

* * *

It's a relief to get to the hotel. As well as the beginning of their travels went, the back end is a mess. Erik ends up having quite sharp words with several airline workers on their treatment with regards to Charles's disability, but although he shouts and makes quite a dramatic scene in public, he neither destroys anything nor threatens anyone with lawsuits, so in a way, Charles considers it further evidence of the personal growth Erik has made in the last few decades. If he were in less charitable spirits with Erik at the moment, he might be annoyed, but in the mood Charles is in, he finds it rather sweet.

Still, by the time they've reached the hotel, he's absolutely exhausted. He spares a thought to the days when he could just collapse onto a bed without any consequences to consider, and goes through his nightly preparations before falling into a heavy, deep sleep, as soon as he can.

Erik is already up when Charles wakes in the morning. The door to their small patio is open, and Erik is standing outside, drinking in the sunlight. Erik's always preferred the warmth -- more often than not, Charles had found the Brotherhood in southernly climates, over the years. Perhaps Erik was cold enough in the winters of his youth to satisfy him for the rest of his life.

And yet, Charles reflects, Erik is going to come back with him to New York when their trip is over. New York, which might as well be a different planet from here. There was two feet of snow on the school grounds when Charles left yesterday morning.

"Good morning," Charles says, just loudly enough for his voice to carry out and above the sounds of bird and whatever other wildlife that might be.

Erik turns. His face looks as grave as ever, but there's a twinkle in his eyes. "Good morning, Charles." 

He steps back into the room, sliding the door shut behind him, and heads toward the end table in the corner. Charles had barely noticed it yesterday, but there's an electric kettle there, a small selection of what looks to be teas and instant coffees, along with two mugs. 

"Tea?" Erik asks, with a tilt of his head.

"Please," Charles says. He lifts himself out of the bed and into his chair and heads to the bathroom to perform his morning ministrations. By the time he's finished, Erik has prepared a cup for each of them.

Charles takes his from his hands and sips at it greedily, as it's too hot to gulp. "I suppose that wasn't quite what one expects of a wedding night."

"What," Erik says, "my bridegroom passed out beside me before we could consummate? I can't say I was entirely surprised."

Charles raises his eyebrows in silent inquiry.

"I can remember more than one night on the road where the same thing occurred," Erik points out. He shares a memory -- fifty years old, stained with a tinted nostalgia -- of the first weeks when they meant, on the road to find more of their kind together. They were young, and virile, and in love, the kind of love that had not yet been tested; they couldn't keep their hands off of each other in those days. Except, apparently, for those occasional nights when Charles would over-indulge in the demon drink and pass out as soon as they reached their rooms.

Charles has to chuckle at the baffled disappointment evident in the young Erik of the scenes, kissed just enough to be worked up before being left to take care of himself. "I don't remember that at all," he tells Erik.

Erik snorts in amusement. "At any rate, I've made an honest man out of you now."

"Ah, yes. I've a ring on my finger now. There's no reason for me to put out when I've already got you ensnared."

Erik merely snorts again at that. Charles can sense several responses running through his mind, each rejected, each concerning how long and thoroughly Charles has had him ensnared. It puts Charles in quite a pleased mood, one that stays with him as he gets out his tablet and checks his emails and news. 

Only two messages from Hank, which is two fewer than Charles was expecting. Hank had resisted heavily Charles's placing him in charge while he was away, though he's done it before, and truthfully Hank has been running the day-to-day operations of the school in all but name for the better part of a decade now, as Charles has slowly begun to admit he can't do as much as easily as he could at forty, or even sixty. 

There's nothing in either email that Hank can't take care of on his own, anyway; the same is true of everything else in Charles's inbox as well. Good. This is his honeymoon, the first vacation he's taken in ages. A week for him and Erik, alone. It's longer than they've had together in a very long time, and Charles plans to start as he means to go on.

"I didn't expect a wedding night at all," Erik says abruptly, out of place in the silence of the room.

Charles looks up from his tablet, blinking at him. It takes him a moment to place the context in their previous conversation. "Didn't you?" Charles says mildly. "I suppose... Perhaps not expected, you're right. Hoped would be a better word."

If it had been legal then, he would have said yes to Erik fifty years ago. Forty years ago, Charles would have laughed in his face. Their relationship has spun like a top so many times over the decades. There's never been a time when he didn't love Erik, though sometimes he wished otherwise. There's never been another person Charles could bring himself to commit fully to, though he came close, once or twice. It was never right. 

It feels right, now. Surprisingly so. The weight of the ring on his hand feels as comfortable as if it's part of his own body.

Erik makes a noise in his throat, something like a cluck, and changes the subject. "Do you have any preferences on how we should spend the day?"

"No," Charles says, "but I rather feel like you do."

A smile, then, the first of the morning. Not sardonic, or ironic, or cruel; just a smile, highlighting every familiar line in Erik's beautiful, cragged face. "I thought perhaps a stroll on the beach. They're covered with shark's teeth, they say."

Charles considers it. "Could we have a picnic?"

"A picnic?" Erik repeats skeptically.

"If you're allowed the cliche of a long walk on the beach, surely I'm allowed my own cliche as well."

"All right," Erik says with a shrug. "A picnic it is."

It's good to start out a marriage with compromise. It's something their relationship has never had enough of. But then, things are different now; that's the entire point.

"Come here and kiss me," Charles says, and Erik has nothing smart to add before he does it.

* * *

They return from the beach with a basket weighed down with a layer of fossils, rustling with every move Erik makes as he carries it in. Charles sets Erik to work immediately at the task of sorting them by shape and size. Erik makes a long-suffering face, but he doesn't argue, setting himself to the job with the same type of focus that is the only way Erik truly approaches everything.

It's interesting to watch Erik like this. Charles has seen Erik still, of course, a million times, but it's most often been the stillness of a snake, or a predator; something dangerous and aware and defensive. Never calm. Never -- never in the moment, not trying to think three steps ahead, plotting out his next moves.

Charles finds he likes it, very much.

While Erik works on that, Charles gets his tablet out once more and heads straight to Google to search for "shark's teeth." He reads out loud the most interesting bits, to an audience of Erik's occasional "hmm" and grunt, and has Erik hand him representative samples so he can compare them up close to the pictures and identify them.

"There," Erik says, finally. "Done." Neat, even piles across the desk that sits next to the large television. "And now what do you plan to do with them?"

"I haven't the foggiest," Charles admits, and Erik huffs out a noise, torn between exasperation and amusement. "Perhaps I'll keep some in a jar in my study." On his desk, where he can see it every day when he works, and remember today.

Erik huffs again, but it sounds more put on, this time. Charles smiles at him. "What do you think of room service for dinner?"

Charles doesn't expect an objection, nor does he get one.

* * *

He takes a pill with their dinner.

("Are you sure you brought them with?" Erik asked in some frustration, searching once more through the inside pocket of Charles's carry-on bag, along the rest of his medications.

"I'm an elderly man on my honeymoon," Charles said. "Of _course_ I brought them."

He did. Erik found the bottle a minute later.)

One thing Charles has always had to admit, even back in the days when he thought he would rather die than acknowledge a single positive attribute of Erik's character: he's always been the most generous of lovers, dedicated to Charles's pleasure as if his own were merely an afterthought.

If Erik sheds a tear or two during their lovemaking (another wonder, something that hasn't happened since those first days, passed now almost into the time of myths)... well, Charles is a little misty-eyed himself.

* * *

Erik falls asleep immediately afterward, of course, just as always. Charles stays awake longer, watching him sleep, letting his thoughts drift as they will.

Strange, how fast things can change. It's been barely a week since Erik floated up to his window, letting himself in to lay down his astonishing blunt proposal.

Charles had stared at him, unable to speak for so long that the self-assured facade of Erik's face had begun to crack every so slightly -- and then Charles had hurried in his rush to get words out. 

"Yes, yes, of course -- but you had better have a ring. A real ring, not some thrown-together improvisation--"

There was a ring. Erik had come prepared. So prepared, in fact, that he was ready to hustle Charles out in his pajamas into the night, get it done with immediately. Charles had insisted on an engagement, though. They were going to do this _right_ , and he wanted, too, time to indulge himself in it, to get used to it and enjoy it.

He lasted five days. But he'd fallen in love with Erik in less than five minutes; and their courtship had taken five decades. Perhaps it all evened out in the end. 

Charles finds himself too restless to sleep, then, and so he drags out one of the half-dozen books he's brought with him and reads by lamplight. Until Erik wakes up to take a piss and, returning to bed, grumbles at Charles and threatens to turn the light off himself with his powers and generally acts like an ass.

Charles tells Erik so, and Erik's eyes narrow.

"It's too late to say that. You're stuck with me now."

"Yes," Charles says, rolling his eyes, "you're _my_ ass," and he sets down his book on the nightstand, pulls the lamp cord, and settles down to sleep beside his husband.


End file.
